Went to bed early last night for the first time in a week; reading at 11:30 and asleep at midnight.

In the first part, I was an outsider. The only clear memory now is of a rock embedded to the left of my left knee, under the skin but visible like only a thin layer of epidermis kept it in. I popped it like I would a zit to reveal a rough stone an inch across and half an inch deep. The wound was mericfully painless and bloodless.

In the second part, I was an insider. We were hosting a Thanksgiving (nee Friendsgiving) in our small, well-lighted house. A colleague from two gigs prior was attending, with his own haughty cooking equipment and reluctant gratitude of participation. The food was excellent I remember being warm.

Woke up around 6:15am to be at the dining hall by 7 which it turns out is 30 minutes early for breakfast. Read a book.

Woke up early again this morning, 4:44 by the alarm clock. The covers were too much, I guess.

The party was epic. My family and Cindy's family were there. All of my past girlfriends and their families were there with remarkable accuracy, or at least what I now believe to be accuracy. There was a big pool (that later somehow drained and was filled with cubes of mangos) adjacent to a library. All the people were dressed in their pool party best, sunglasses and all. A highlight for me was my mom suddenly splashing into the water with a giant rusted float-car straight off the playa. It sank, with my mom, to the bottom of the pool where it sat for just long enough to be nerve-wracking, then suddenly was cut loose from it's moorings to spring up to the surface. People chatted with each other. I don't remember any music though I woke up with 12 Rods stuck in my head.

Later, when the pool switched to the mango-pit and people had begun to leave, a dude whose identity escapes me now picked me up and threw me into the mangos. He had quite the muscle, tossing me 50 feet away and 20 feet high. I landed unharmed but it was clearly the end. Two police officers brought him over to me, waist deep in mango, and asked if I had anything to say to him before they took him away. "Be well," I said.

14 November 2013 | 10:08 pm

This morning on the drive to work, we saw a pile of someone's things on the side of the road where normally we would not expect to find such things. Among them was a small stuffed lion. I decided that we would go back after work and save it. Tonight when we went back, the lion was gone though the bulk of the things remained.

Obviously I am a mess of emotions. On the one hand I am upset that I was not able to bring the lion home as expected. On the other hand I am delighted that someone besides me saw fit to rescue the lion.

19 July 2012 | 09:45 pm

9 July 2012 | 09:10 pm

27 June 2012 | 06:44 am

The days are long and the months are short. We come and go and birthdays pass by. I'm 30 now! Cindy turned 26 today. I gave her a pair of earrings. Tonight we're going out for Thai food and dessert. Meanwhile I need to figure out a way to categorize 34,000 clinical trials and remember Bernoulli's equation...P(naught)+rho*g*y+(1/2)*rho*v^2? Yeah...

1 April 2012 | 03:40 pm

We had a bottle of Luis Segundo "Valle Las Acequias Mendoza" 2007 malbec and about a third of a bottle of Susana Balbo Signature 2009 malbec which had been mostly consumed 3 or 4 weeks ago. The Balbo was too tannic to eat with anything but a rare-cooked steak. The Segundo was very light with no tannic end to it. On the other hand, one glass of the Segundo mixed with 25-50 mL of the Balbo...phenomenal. Dinner wasn't bad either.

26 February 2012 | 09:28 pm

I knew it was coming; I was going to have to deal with it. The apartment was echoing more and more. Small things were growing sparse. Only a few big items remained, waiting for hands and a truck. I made the final pass for things that could go in boxes and it was on the topmost eastern shelf in the closet. There was no denying it's presence. I recalled the entire thread in my mind, unwound it like so many rolls of film. I grabbed a UCSD bike-to-work shirt that never fit right, an old license plate from a car I no longer have, and it. They all went in the trash bin. Later we came by, six hands and a truck, and moved the last big pieces. After everything was up in the new apartment, we opened a couple Full Suits, put on a Stan Getz record, and talked about trial enrollment, prospective stratification, the different styles of diplomatic fencing, conference abstracts, and genetic disorders.

29 January 2012 | 07:13 pm

I didn't save the cocktail napkin from the Red Fox Room and I didn't save the receipt from Bice. On the other hand, there are photos from the hike and a giant piece of a dead tree is in the back seat of my car. Perhaps most importantly, introductions were made. Ineffable mysteries abound.